Wide adoption of credit cards, debit cards, electronic payment devices, online shopping systems, and online banking systems has resulted in few people carrying large sums of cash or writing many checks. People still need to transfer money to each other, however, for many different reasons. For example, a person may want to pay back a friend for money borrowed from that friend during a recent weekend night out, or a person may want to send money to a relative as a gift. Paying someone back or giving a gift of money to another person, however, can be difficult if you don't have the cash on hand and/or if the other person is not physically present with you. In such cases, a person may need to visit an automated teller machine (ATM) or mail the other person a check, both of which can be time consuming and/or inconvenient.
Processes exist for electronically transferring money from a sender's financial account to a recipient's financial account, however, such processes typically require the sender to know the recipient's financial account information so that the sender's bank can transfer money to the proper account. Most people do not know the financial account numbers of their friends and/or relatives, nor do most people want to provide their financial account numbers to others for privacy and/or security reasons.
Third party service providers have developed systems for making person-to-person payments, but these systems typically require persons to open a special type of financial account with an online entity, and create (and then remember) yet another username and password. In addition, in order to open up such an online person-to-person account, users are required to disclose confidential financial institution account information to the service provider company. In addition to taking some take time set up, such online person-to-person accounts are not always user-friendly, and in some cases do not provide adequate protections from being hacked or otherwise tampered with by a hacker and/or thief.
Therefore, a need exists for a convenient, user-friendly and secure person-to-person payment process and/or system wherein a caller can send payment to a recipient while conducting a mobile telephone conversation.
Throughout the drawings and the detailed description, unless otherwise described, the same drawing reference numerals will be understood to refer to the same elements, features, and structures. The relative size and depiction of these elements may be exaggerated or adjusted for clarity, illustration, and/or convenience.